Cellular channel bonding for improved data transmission

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods wirelessly communicate data over a plurality of cellular channels by requesting an allocation of cellular frequency channels from a mobile station to a base station; allocating available frequency channels in response to the request from the mobile station; and bonding the available frequency channels to communicate data.

BACKGROUND

[0001] The present application relates to bonded channels for increasingwireless transmission bandwidth.

[0002] The impressive growth of cellular mobile telephony as well as thenumber of Internet users promises an exciting potential for cellularwireless data services. As demonstrated by the popularity of the Palm Vwireless handheld computer, the demand for wireless data services, andparticularly for high-performance wireless Internet access, is growingrapidly. However, the price/performance curve for existing cellular dataservices can still be enhanced. One reason for the currentprice/performance curve stems from the fact that current wireless dataservices are based on circuit switched radio transmission. At the airinterface, a complete traffic channel is allocated for a single user forthe entire call period, which can be inefficient for bursty traffic suchas Internet traffic. For bursty Internet traffic, packet switched bearerservices result in better utilization of the traffic channels because achannel will only be allocated when needed and will be releasedimmediately after the transmission of the packets. With this principle,multiple users can share one physical channel (statisticalmultiplexing).

[0003] In order to address these inefficiencies, two cellular packetdata technologies have been developed: cellular digital packet data(CDPD) (for AMPS, IS-95, and IS-136) and the General Packet RadioService (GPRS). GPRS is a bearer service for GSM that improves andsimplifies wireless access to packet data networks. GPRS applies apacket radio principle where packets can be directly routed from theGPRS mobile stations to packet switched networks. In a GSM/GPRS network,conventional circuit switched services (speech, data, and SMS) and GPRSservices can be used in parallel: a class A mobile station supportssimultaneous operation of GPRS and conventional GSM services; a class Bmobile station is able to register with the network for both GPRS andconventional GSM services simultaneously, but can use only one serviceat a time; and a class C mobile station can attach for either GPRS orconventional GSM services, but cannot simultaneously register and usethe services. GPRS improves the utilization of the radio resources,offers volume-based billing, higher transfer rates, shorter accesstimes, and simplifies the access to packet data networks.

[0004] One evolution of GPRS is called EDGE (Enhanced Data for GlobalEvolution). EDGE uses 8 PSK modulation that automatically adapts tolocal radio conditions, offering the fastest transfer rates near to basestations in good conditions. It offers up to 48 kbps per channel,compared to 14 kbps per channel with GPRS and 9.6 kbps per channel forGSM. By allowing simultaneous use of multiple channels, EDGE allowsrates of 384 kbps using all eight GSM channels. However, even theimproved data transfer rate in GPRS is insufficient for certainapplications, for example data visualization, real-time imaging, videoon demand, video streaming, video conferencing, and other multimediaapplications.

SUMMARY

[0005] In one aspect, a method to wirelessly communicate data over aplurality of cellular channels includes requesting an allocation ofcellular frequency channels from a mobile station to a base station;allocating available frequency channels in response to the request fromthe mobile station; and bonding the available frequency channels tocommunicate data.

[0006] Implementations of the above aspect may include one or more ofthe following. The method includes communicating on a short-range radiochannel, wherein the short-range radio channel is Bluetooth or IEEE802.11 (also known as Wireless Local Area Network or WLAN). The methodcan bond the short-range radio channel along with several cellularfrequency channels to increase bandwidth. The cellular channels canconsist of an uplink band around 890-915 MHz and a downlink band around935-960 MHz. The method can bond two adjacent channels. Each band can bedivided into 124 pairs of frequency duplex channels with 200 kHz carrierspacing using Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). Another method,Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) can split the 200 kHz radio channelinto a plurality of time slots; bonding the time slots; and transmittingand receiving data in the bonded time slots. Cellular packet data can betransmitted in accordance with the following protocols: cellular digitalpacket data (CDPD) (for AMPS, IS-95, and IS-136), General Packet RadioService (GPRS) and EDGE (Enhanced Data for Global Evolution).

[0007] In another aspect, a reconfigurable processor core includes oneor more processing units; a long-range transceiver unit coupled to theprocessing units, the long-range transceiver unit communicating over aplurality of cellular frequency channels; a short-range transceivercoupled to the processing units; and means for bonding a plurality ofwireless channels.

[0008] Implementations of the above aspect may include one or more ofthe following elements to perform the necessary computations andelectronic operations. A reconfigurable processor core includes one ormore digital signal processors (DSPs) and/or one or more reducedinstruction set computer (RISC) processors. A router can be coupled tothe one or more processing units. The short-range transceivercommunicates over a short-range radio channel with a means for bondingthe short-range radio channel with the cellular frequency channels toincrease bandwidth. The cellular channels comprise an uplink band around890-915 MHz and a downlink band around 935-960 MHz. A means for bondingover two adjacent cellular channels can be provided to increase thebandwidth of the channels.

[0009] Advantages of the system may include one or more of thefollowing. The system allows an end-user of a mobile device, such as amobile phone or portable computer, to increase the bandwidth ofavailable radio channels on demand for transmitting messages andinformation quickly over wireless channels. This is achieved byaggregating available wireless channels to increase the overallbandwidth for which a message is transmitted between a mobile handsetand a base station so that content rich messages such as multimedia andvideo files may be transmitted quickly. Additionally, the user candecide when to scale the bandwidth: the user can elect to pay more toget the benefits of bonded channels, or can elect to pay theconventional air-time cost for applications that do not need immediatelarge bandwidth.

[0010] Other advantages may include the following. The system transmitsdata at high effective data rates and that alleviates latenciesconcomitant with the time domain data overlay systems. By providing adata communication structure in which temporarily unused wirelesschannels may be pooled to increase the data transmission rates, thesystem can transmit data at the same time that voice is beingtransmitted, without overloading the system. If a wireless local areanetwork (WLAN) is not available in a given area, a number of cellularchannels are bonded to increase transmission capacity.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0011] The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and form apart of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and,together with the description, serve to explain the principles of theinvention:

[0012]FIG. 1A shows a process 10 to wirelessly communicate data over aplurality of cellular channels.

[0013]FIG. 1B further illustrates exemplary data transmission usingbonded channels.

[0014]FIG. 2A shows a block diagram of a multi-mode wirelesscommunicator device fabricated on a single silicon integrated chip.

[0015]FIG. 2B shows an exemplary second process to bond several cellularchannels and WLAN channels together to further increase transmissionspeed for the system of FIG. 2A.

[0016]FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a wireless communications system.

DESCRIPTION

[0017]FIG. 1A shows a process 10 to wirelessly communicate data over aplurality of cellular channels. The process 10 allows a single mobilestation to transmit on multiple cellular frequency channels that havebeen “bonded” or linked together for the purpose of the transmission.Each channel contains one or more frames, and a single mobile stationcan transmit on multiple time slots of the same TDMA frame (multislotoperation). This results in a very flexible channel allocation: one toone hundred twenty four (124) frequency channels (or one to 62 channelsfor 200 kHz channel spacing interleaved systems), with one to eight timeslots per TDMA frame can be allocated for one mobile station. Moreover,uplink and downlink are allocated separately, which efficiently supportsasymmetric data traffic (e.g., Web browsing).

[0018] First, the process 10 decides whether the added costs of bondingchannels are justifiable and if so, sends a bonding request andcommunicates a required data transmission bandwidth (step 12). Based onthe size of the file(s) to be transmitted and known channel bandwidth,the process 10 computes the number of frequency channels that are needed(step 14). Next, the process 10 requests an allocation of cellularfrequency channels from a mobile station to a base station (step 16). Inresponse, the base station looks up available (open) frequency channelsin its memory storage and allocates available frequency channels inresponse to the request from the mobile station (step 18). Informationon the allocated channels is sent to the mobile station to set up itstransceiver to capture data on all allocated channels (step 20). Theinformation can include a list with channel identification or channelfrequency, or alternatively can include a starting channel and channelspacing, or can include a starting channel and frequency hoppinginformation, for example.

[0019] Once the mobile station sends an acknowledgement that it has setup its RF circuitry to receive data over a plurality of frequencychannels, the base station can transmit data over the plurality offrequency channels (step 24). In this manner, the allocated frequencychannels are bonded together to communicate data with high bandwidth.Upon conclusion of data transmission, or alternatively when the userdecides to get out of the bonded channel mode due to cost or otherreasons, the mobile station sends a deallocation request to the basestation (step 26), and the base station in turn releases the deallocatedchannels for other transmissions or for supporting additional users(step 30).

[0020]FIG. 1B further illustrates exemplary data transmission usingbonded channels. In the embodiment of FIG. 1B, the mobile stationcontains one transmitter/receiver pair that transmits on an uplink bandaround 890-915 MHz for the uplink (direction from mobile station to basestation) and receives on a downlink band around 935-960 MHz for thedownlink (direction from base station to mobile station). The 25 MHzbands are then divided into 124 pairs of frequency duplex channels with200 kHz carrier spacing using Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA).A cell can use two adjacent channels, and the channel spacing can besaid to be 200 kHz interleaved. TDMA is used to split the 200 kHz radiochannel into 8 time slots (which creates 8 logical channels). A logicalchannel is therefore defined by its frequency and the TDMA frame timeslot number.

[0021] In one exemplary sequence in the embodiment of FIG. 1A, themobile station requests two channels, and in this example, channels 50and 52 in FIG. 1A at 890.0 MHz and 890.4 MHz are available. The basestation responds by sending the 890.0 and 890.4 MHz frequencyidentification to the mobile station. The mobile station in turn updatesits transceiver with the frequency information, and the transceiver canlisten for data in all frames associated with the 890.2 and 890.4 MHzchannels. In this example, two frequency channels have been bondedtogether to increase transmission bandwidth.

[0022] Although the above example illustrates a static allocation, theallocation of channels can be performed dynamically, depending on thecurrent traffic load, the priority of the service, and the multi-slotclass. A load supervision procedure monitors the transmission load ineach cell. According to the current demand, the number of channels canbe changed. Channels not currently in use by conventional GSM/GPRS/EDGEcan be allocated to increase the quality of service. When there is aresource demand for services with higher priority, channels can bede-allocated. Hence, channels are only allocated when data packets aresent or received, and they are released after the transmission. Forbursty traffic this results in an efficient usage of wireless resourcesand multiple users can share a group of channels to obtain the necessarybandwidth.

[0023]FIG. 2A shows a block diagram of a multi-mode wirelesscommunicator device 100 fabricated on a single silicon integrated chip.In one implementation, the device 100 is an integrated CMOS device withradio frequency (RF) circuits, including a cellular radio core 110, ashort-range wireless transceiver core 130, and a sniffer 111, along sidedigital circuits, including a reconfigurable processor core 150, ahigh-density memory array core 170, and a router 190. The high-densitymemory array core 170 can include various memory technologies such asflash memory and dynamic random access memory (DRAM), among others, ondifferent portions of the memory array core.

[0024] The reconfigurable processor core 150 can include one or moreprocessors 151 such as MIPS processors and/or one or more digital signalprocessors (DSPs) 153, among others. The reconfigurable processor core150 has a bank of efficient processors 151 and a bank of DSPs 153 withembedded functions. These processors 151 and 153 can be configured tooperate optimally on specific problems and can include buffers on thereceiving end and buffers on the transmitting end such the buffers shownin FIG. 1. For example, the bank of DSPs 153 can be optimized to handlediscrete cosine transforms (DCTs) or Viterbi encodings, among others.Additionally, dedicated hardware 155 can be provided to handle specificalgorithms in silicon more efficiently than the programmable processors151 and 153. The number of active processors is controlled depending onthe application, so that power is not used when it is not needed. Thisembodiment does not rely on complex clock control methods to conservepower, since the individual clocks are not run at high speed, but ratherthe unused processor is simply turned off when not needed.

[0025] Through the router 190, the multi-mode wireless communicatordevice 100 can detect and communicate with any wireless system itencounters at a given frequency. The router 190 performs the switch inreal time through an engine that keeps track of the addresses of wherethe packets are going. The router 190 can send packets in parallelthrough two or more separate pathways. For example, if a Bluetooth™ orWLAN connection is established, the router 190 knows which address it islooking at and will be able to immediately route packets using anotherconnection standard. In doing this operation, the router 190 workingwith the RF sniffer 111 periodically scans its radio environment(‘ping’) to decide on optimal transmission medium. The router 190 cansend some packets in parallel through both the primary and secondarycommunication channel to make sure some of the packets arrive at theirdestinations.

[0026] The reconfigurable processor core 150 controls the cellular radiocore 110 and the short-range wireless transceiver core 130 to provide aseamless dual-mode network integrated circuit that operates with aplurality of distinct and unrelated communications standards andprotocols such as Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), GeneralPacket Radio Service (GPRS), Enhance Data Rates for GSM Evolution (Edge)and Bluetooth™ or WLAN. The cell phone core 110 provides wide areanetwork (WAN) access, while the short-range wireless transceiver core130 supports local area network (LAN) access. The reconfigurableprocessor core 150 has embedded read-only-memory (ROM) containingsoftware such as IEEE802.11, GSM, GPRS, Edge, and/or Bluetooth™ or WLANprotocol software, among others.

[0027] In one embodiment, the cellular radio core 110 includes atransmitter/receiver section that is connected to an off-chip antenna(not shown). The transmitter/receiver section is a direct conversionradio that includes an I/Q demodulator, transmit/receiveoscillator/clock generator, multi-band power amplifier (PA) and PAcontrol circuit, and voltage-controlled oscillators and synthesizers. Inanother embodiment of transmitter/receiver section 112, intermediatefrequency (IF) stages are used. In this embodiment, during cellularreception, the transmitter/receiver section converts received signalsinto a first intermediate frequency (IF) by mixing the received signalswith a synthesized local oscillator frequency and then translates thefirst IF signal to a second IF signal. The second IF signal ishard-limited and processed to extract an RSSI signal proportional to thelogarithm of the amplitude of the second IF signal. The hard-limited IFsignal is processed to extract numerical values related to theinstantaneous signal phase, which are then combined with the RSSIsignal.

[0028] For voice reception, the combined signals are processed by theprocessor core 150 to form PCM voice samples that are subsequentlyconverted into an analog signal and provided to an external speaker orearphone. For data reception, the processor simply transfers the dataover an input/output (I/O) port. During voice transmission, an off-chipmicrophone captures analog voice signals, digitizes the signal, andprovides the digitized signal to the processor core 150. The processorcore 150 codes the signal and reduces the bit-rate for transmission. Theprocessor core 150 converts the reduced bit-rate signals to modulatedsignals such as I,I,Q,Q modulating signals, for example. During datatransmission, the data is modulated and the modulated signals are thenfed to the cellular telephone transmitter of the transmitter/receiversection.

[0029] Turning now to the short-range wireless transceiver core 130, theshort-range wireless transceiver core 130 contains a radio frequency(RF) modem core 132 that communicates with a link controller core 134.The processor core 150 controls the link controller core 134. In oneembodiment, the RF modem core 132 has a direct-conversion radioarchitecture with integrated VCO and frequency synthesizer. The RF-unit132 includes an RF receiver connected to an analog-digital converter(ADC), which in turn is connected to a modem 116 performing digitalmodulation, channel filtering, AFC, symbol timing recovery, and bitslicing operations. For transmission, the modem is connected to adigital to analog converter (DAC) that in turn drives an RF transmitter.

[0030] The link controller core 134 provides link control function andcan be implemented in hardware or in firmware. One embodiment of thecore 134 is compliant with the Bluetooth™ or WLAN specification andprocesses Bluetooth™ or WLAN packet types. For header creation, the linkcontroller core 134 performs a header error check, scrambles the headerto randomize the data and to minimize DC bias, and performs forwarderror correction (FEC) encoding to reduce the chances of gettingcorrupted information. The payload is passed through a cyclic redundancycheck (CRC), encrypted/scrambled and FEC-encoded. The FEC encoded datais then inserted into the header.

[0031] In one exemplary operating sequence, a user is in his or heroffice and browses a web site on a portable computer through a wiredlocal area network cable such as an Ethernet cable. Then the user walksto a nearby cubicle. As the user disconnects, the device 100 initiates ashort-range connection using a Bluetooth™ or WLAN connection. When theuser drives from his or her office to an off-site meeting, theBluetooth™ or WLAN connection is replaced with cellular telephoneconnection. Thus, the device 100 enables easy synchronization andmobility during a cordless connection, and open up possibilities forestablishing quick, temporary (ad-hoc) connections with colleagues,friends, or office networks. Appliances using the device 100 are easy touse since they can be set to automatically find and contact each otherwhen within range.

[0032] When the multi-mode wireless communicator device 100 is in thecellular telephone connection mode, the short-range wireless transceivercore 130 is powered down to save power. Unused sections of the chip arealso powered down to save power. Many other battery-power savingfeatures are incorporated, and in particular, the cellular radio core110 when in the standby mode can be powered down for most of the timeand only wake up at predetermined instances to read messages transmittedby cellular telephone base stations in the radio's allocated paging timeslot.

[0033] When the user arrives at the destination, according to oneimplementation, the cellular radio core 110 uses idle time between itswaking periods to activate the short-range wireless transceiver core 130to search for a Bluetooth™ or WLAN channel signal. If Bluetooth™ or WLANsignals are detected, the phone sends a deregistration message to thecellular system and/or a registration message to the Bluetooth™ or WLANsystem. Upon deregistration from the cellular system, the cellular radiocore 110 is turned off or put into a deep sleep mode with periodicpinging and the short-range wireless transceiver core 130 and relevantparts of the synthesizer are powered up to listen to the Bluetooth™ orWLAN channel.

[0034] According to one implementation, when the short-range wirelesscore 130 in the idle mode detects that Bluetooth™ or WLAN signals havedropped in strength, the device 100 activates the cellular radio core110 to establish a cellular link, using information from the latestperiodic ping. If a cellular connection is established and Bluetooth™ orWLAN signals are weak, the device 100 sends a deregistration message tothe Bluetooth™ or WLAN system and/or a registration message to thecellular system. Upon registration from the cellular system, theshort-range transceiver core 130 is turned off or put into a deep sleepmode and the cellular radio core 110 and relevant parts of thesynthesizer are powered up to listen to the cellular channel.

[0035] The router 190 can send packets in parallel through the separatepathways of cellular or Bluetooth™ or WLAN. For example, if a Bluetooth™or WLAN connection is established, the router 190 knows which address itis looking at and will be able to immediately route packets usinganother connection standard. In doing this operation, the router 190pings its environment to decide on optimal transmission medium. If thesignal reception is poor for both pathways, the router 190 can send somepackets in parallel through both the primary and secondary communicationchannel (cellular and/or Bluetooth™ or WLAN) to make sure some of thepackets arrive at their destinations. However, if the signal strength isadequate, the router 190 prefers the Bluetooth™ or WLAN mode to minimizethe number of subscribers using the capacity-limited and more expensivecellular system at any give time. Only a small percentage of the device100, those that are temporarily outside the Bluetooth or WLAN coverage,represents a potential load on the capacity of the cellular system, sothat the number of mobile users can be many times greater than thecapacity of the cellular system alone could support.

[0036]FIG. 2B shows an exemplary second process 210 to bond cellularchannels and Bluetooth or WLAN channels together to further increasetransmission speed for the system of FIG. 2A. The process 210 receives arequest to communicate one or more files with a data transmission size(step 212). Based on the transmission size and known cellular andBluetooth or WLAN channel bandwidth, the process 210 computes the numberof frequency channels that are needed (step 214). Next, the process 210requests an allocation of cellular frequency channels from a mobilestation to a base station (step 216). In response, the base stationlooks up available (open) frequency channels in its memory storage andallocates available frequency channels in response to the request fromthe mobile station (step 218). Information on the allocated channels issent to the mobile station to set up its transceiver to capture data onall allocated channels (step 220). Once the mobile station sends anacknowledgement that it has set up its RF circuitry to receive data overa plurality of frequency channels, the base station can transmit dataover the plurality of frequency channels and the Bluetooth or WLANchannel (step 224). In this manner, the allocated frequency channels arebonded together to communicate data with high bandwidth using aplurality of long-range and short-range wireless channels. Uponconclusion of data transmission, the mobile station sends a deallocationrequest to the base station (step 326), and turns off the Bluetooth orWLAN channel (step 328). The base station in turn releases thedeallocated channels for other transmissions (step 330).

[0037]FIG. 3 shows a cellular switching system 410. The system 410 hasone or more Mobile Stations (MS) 412 that can transmit and receive dataon-demand using a plurality of channels bonded together. The system 410also has a Base Station Subsystem (BSS) 414, a Network and SwitchingSubsystem (NSS), and an Operation and Support Subsystem (OSS). The BSS414 connects the MS 412 and the NSS and is in charge of the transmissionand reception. The BSS 414 includes a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) orBase Station 420 and a Base Station Controller (BSC) 422.

[0038] The BTS 420 corresponds to the transceivers and antennas used ineach cell of the network. A BTS 420 is usually placed in the center of acell. Its transmitting power defines the size of a cell. Each BTS 420has between one and sixteen transceivers depending on the density ofusers in the cell. The BSC 422 controls a group of BTS 420 and managestheir radio resources. A BSC 422 is principally in charge of handovers,frequency hopping, exchange functions and control of the radio frequencypower levels of the BTSs 420. The NSS 416's main role is to manage thecommunications between the mobile users and other users, such as mobileusers, ISDN users, fixed telephony users, among others. It also includesdata bases needed in order to store information about the subscribersand to manage their mobility. The NSS includes a Mobile servicesSwitching Center (MSC) that MSC performs the switching functions of thenetwork. It also provides connection to other networks. The NSS alsoincludes a Gateway Mobile services Switching Center (GMSC) that is theinterface between the mobile cellular network and the PSTN. It is incharge of routing calls from the fixed network towards a GSM user. TheNSS also includes a Home Location Register (HLR) which is a databasethat stores information of the subscribers belonging to the coveringarea of a MSC. It also stores the current location of these subscribersand the services to which they have access. The location of thesubscriber corresponds to the SS7 address of the Visitor LocationRegister (VLR) associated to the terminal. The NSS also includes aVisitor Location Register (VLR). The VLR contains information from asubscriber's HLR necessary in order to provide the subscribed servicesto visiting users. When a subscriber enters the covering area of a newMSC, the VLR associated to this MSC will request information about thenew subscriber to its corresponding HLR. The VLR will then have enoughinformation in order to assure the subscribed services without needingto ask the HLR each time a communication is established. The NSS alsoincludes an Authentication Center (AuC) that provides the parametersneeded for authentication and encryption functions. These parametershelp to verify the user's identity. The NSS includes an EquipmentIdentity Register (EIR), which is also used for security purposes. It isa register containing information about the mobile equipments. Moreparticularly, it contains a list of all valid terminals. A terminal isidentified by its International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI). TheEIR allows then to forbid calls from stolen or unauthorized terminals(e.g, a terminal which does not respect the specifications concerningthe output RF power). The NSS also communicates with a GSM InterworkingUnit (GIWU), which corresponds to an interface to various networks fordata communications. During these communications, the transmission ofspeech and data can be alternated. The OSS is connected to the differentcomponents of the NSS and to the BSC, in order to control and monitorthe GSM system. It is also in charge of controlling the traffic load ofthe BSS.

[0039] Although specific embodiments of the present invention have beenillustrated in the accompanying drawings and described in the foregoingdetailed description, it will be understood that the invention is notlimited to the particular embodiments described herein, but is capableof numerous rearrangements, modifications, and substitutions withoutdeparting from the scope of the invention. For example, althoughexemplary embodiments using Bluetooth, WLAN, GSM, GPRS, and EDGE havebeen discussed, the invention is applicable to other forms of datatransmission, include radio-based and optical-based transmissiontechniques.

1. A method to wirelessly communicate data over a plurality of cellularchannels, comprising: requesting an allocation of preferably adjacentcellular frequency channels from a mobile station to a base station;allocating available frequency channels in response to the request fromthe mobile station; and bonding the available frequency channels tocommunicate data.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprisingcommunicating on a short-range radio channel.
 3. The method of claim 2,wherein the short-range radio channel is Bluetooth or WLAN (802.11x). 4.The method of claim 2, further comprising bonding the short-range radiochannel with the cellular frequency channels to increase bandwidth. 5.The method of claim 1, wherein the cellular channels comprise an uplinkband around 890-915 MHz and a downlink band around 935-960 MHz.
 6. Themethod of claim 5, further comprising bonding over two adjacentchannels.
 7. The method of claim 5, wherein each band is divided into124 pairs of frequency duplex channels with 200 kHz carrier spacingusing Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA).
 8. The method of claim5, further comprising: splitting the 200 kHz radio channel into aplurality of time slots; bonding the time slots; and transmitting andreceiving data in the bonded time slots.
 9. The method of claim 5,further comprising splitting the 200 kHz radio channel using timedivision multiple access (TDMA).
 10. The method of claim 5, furthercomprising transmitting cellular packet data conforming to one of thefollowing protocols: cellular digital packet data (CDPD) (for AMPS,IS-95, and IS-136), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and EDGE(Enhanced Data for Global Evolution).
 11. A reconfigurable processorcore, comprising: one or more processing units; a long-range transceiverunit coupled to the processing units, the long-range transceiver unitcommunicating over a plurality of cellular frequency channels; ashort-range transceiver coupled to the processing units; and means forbonding a plurality of channels.
 12. The processor core of claim 11,wherein the reconfigurable processor core includes one or more digitalsignal processors (DSPs).
 13. The processor core of claim 11, whereinthe reconfigurable processor core includes one or more reducedinstruction set computer (RISC) processors.
 14. The processor core ofclaim 11, further comprising a router coupled to the one or moreprocessing units.
 15. The processor core of claim 11, wherein theshort-range transceiver communicates over a short-range radio channel,further comprising means for bonding the short-range radio channel withthe cellular frequency channels to increase bandwidth.
 16. The processorcore of claim 11, wherein the cellular channels comprise an uplink bandaround 890-915 MHz and a downlink band around 935-960 MHz.
 17. Theprocessor core of claim 11, further comprising means for bonding overtwo adjacent cellular channels to interleave the channels.
 18. Theprocessor core of claim 11, further comprising: means for splitting the200 kHz radio channel into a plurality of time slots; means for bondingthe time slots; and means for transmitting and receiving data in thebonded time slots.
 19. The processor core of claim 11, furthercomprising means for splitting the 200 kHz radio channel using timedivision multiple access (TDMA).
 20. The processor core of claim 11,further comprising means for transmitting cellular packet dataconforming to one of the following protocols: cellular digital packetdata (CDPD) (for AMPS, IS-95, and IS-136), General Packet Radio Service(GPRS) and EDGE (Enhanced Data for Global Evolution).